From rickshaw puller to start-up founder: Dilkhush Kumar’s success story of RodBez has an IIT-IIM connect

Produced by: Bhoomika
Designed by: Mohsin

The inspirational story of Dilkhush Kumar begins from his days of making ends meet by any means including being a rickshaw puller and vegetable vendor, to unlocking opportunities he sensed by being a serial entrepreneur and founding two start-ups

From rickshaw puller to
serial entrepreneur 

Dilkhush Kumar grew up in a small village named Bangaon in Bihar’s Saharsa. He had to discontinue his studies after Class 12 due to a paucity of funds. To support his family, Dilkhush travelled to Delhi and even worked as a rickshaw puller. He also sold vegetables on the streets of Patna

Dilkhush Kumar's
rags-to-riches journey

He went for an interview for the post of a guard but was rejected as he was considered unpolished and uneducated. In another interview, he was asked to identify the logo of Apple but he failed to do so as he was seeing an iPhone for the first time. Though, he refused to give up as he had a family to feed

Dilkhush Kumar’s story
of resilience

Dilkhush noticed a surge in the usage of shared cab taxis in Delhi and saw potential in this sector. The people of Bihar used some of the popular cab services such as Uber and Ola but their reach was limited to the urban areas. He came back to his village and started to learn to drive from his father who was a bus driver. In 2016, he decided to start his own cab service named AryaGo

From rickshaw puller to
start-up founder

AryaGo was set up with just one car, a second-hand Nano, which Dilkhush bought by borrowing Rs 50,000. He set up his office in a shelter house for cows in his village Bangaon. He then expanded by adding a Santro to his fleet

Dilkhush's first
company - AryaGo 

AryaGo saw some success in the regions of Bihar. Following this, Dilkhush started another shared cab service named RodBez. Dilkhush reportedly chose this word as it was a take on the Bihari way of pronouncing the word ‘roadways’

RodBez: How it started 

Dilkhush used his profits made out of AryaGo to hire IIT and IIM graduates on a part-time basis to build his dream company RodBez. After years of hard work, the company now boasts 4,000 cars in its network 

Success of RodBez

RodBez is not like Ola or Uber. It is essentially a database company that connects customers with taxi drivers and provides vehicles for outstation travel of more than 50 km

Is RodBez like other
cab-sharing services?

As per reports, AryaGo is now being handled by Dilkhush’s wife and some of his former associates

Dilkhush and his wife's success story